Optimising images for better SEO results

Search engines send out automated programs called “spiders” that crawl your site and search for what type of content it contains.

It is important that you use a variety of methods to inform the search engine about your image. Read on for some top tips.

Image relevance– Image relevancy is important when it comes to optimising your SEO. It’s common sense but this step is very important.

Optimise your Alt tags – The Alt tag is probably the most important image optimisation factor. Alt stands for alternate. The text in the alt tag is displayed in place of the image if the image cannot be seen.

Image file names – When you create and save images for your site, it’s a good idea to use your keywords in the image file name. When naming your image, be as descriptive as possible.

Image captions – Use your keywords in the captions above or below your image as well.

Optimising links to your images – If you have any links which are leading to your images, be sure to use the keywords within the anchor text of that link.

Image size – Images can have a huge impact on loading times, especially when you load a huge image. A good rule of thumb is to try to keep your image file size below 70kb. The faster the site, the easier to visit and index a page is, improving your overall SEO.

Adding images – Wherever possible, make sure that images are placed near the relevant text because you don’t want to confuse search engines (or your customers).

Image sitemaps – Consider consolidating your images into a single directory. An image sitemap file would simplify the path to images for search engines.

Check your images with Google Images – As a final step, you can check to see if your images have been indexed in Google Images.

Optimising your images can do more than just increase the SEO of your site, it will also help you get traffic from Google images. Images are a huge part of Google’s searches, so they can help boost your website traffic, if you know what you are doing.